Dear God,
I don’t know how holy reality TV is, but in everything I think about how You move and work in the midst of human brokenness. Aren’t we all the same? Longing for acceptance? Desiring love? Hoping for forever? Lord, You are the answer to our heart’s need to be known and loved. Lord, I pray for all of us to know that there is grace for every mistake.
Love,
Grace
SPOILERS FOR LOVE IS BLIND
Uhm, you might not even watch Love is Blind, but this is my 4th season of watching and 2nd blog about the show. It’s a wealth of entertainment and drama. But I can honestly tell you that this is one of my favorite seasons ever because of the theme of grace.
Grace, not my name, is often a word thrown around. What is grace? Christianity.com reads, “Gracious, the Hebrew word channun, in its verb form, means to be considerate, to show favor. That God is gracious would mean that he is favorably inclined toward us. That he wants to show favor to us. To do what is best for us.
God is gracious. Graciousness is not something that he puts on and takes off depending on the situation. He is always gracious. He does not decide to show us grace. Rather it is just who he is. Because he is gracious he demonstrates grace in everything he does.
Grace is the Hebrew word chanan or the Greek word charis, meaning “the state of kindness and favor toward someone, often with a focus on a benefit given to the object.” (Strong’s Greek 5485).
Grace is what God does because he is gracious. Every action of God toward us involves his grace. His creation, his providence, his conviction of the sinner, his gift of salvation, his equipping of the saints, and the future he has prepared for us. All of this is due to God's grace.” Read more here!
Entitlement comes when we feel that we deserve something from God. Forgiveness, favor, wealth, health, success, power, and love. When we come without considering that it’s God’s grace that we’re standing where we are now.
If we find bitterness or deep-seeded disappointment in our heart, I wonder if we also find a lack of grace there. We don’t feel that God has been kind to us. We don’t believe that God honestly owes us nothing, and if anything we’re due punishment. But God in His goodness has found favor in giving us what we have never deserved: Jesus. The gift of grace bundled in a baby.
Zack & Bliss
I’m jumping into it now!
Left to Right: Bliss, Zach, Irina
In the show, Zack is a 32 year old criminal lawyer with two women he finds himself in love with, Irina and Bliss. As the audience, we know that maybe Irina has a less than favorable character. However, Zack is unaware of the interactions these two women have, and he finds himself at a crossroads.
Isn’t that how we are? Often at a crossroad without the full picture. We’re forced to make a choice, it’s the best we can do at this point. We have all the information we have on hand. We have to choose one to move forward, and to be honest, Bliss scares him. Her family looks a lot like the families that have rejected him for his past.
It’s just too difficult to imagine going through the risk of being with her, and he decides to take the road that looks easier. Bliss is heartbroken when Zack ends their relationship, but I love her strength to not beg or try to convince him to be with her. She knows that the right man won’t need a song and dance to choose her.
So, Zack moves forward with his choice. Irina is…well she’s not happy to finally see him after the proposal. She finds him cartoonish. She thinks he stares at her way too long. Her ears hurt with his singing. She finds her friend’s fiancé way more appealing.
Zack and Irina, soon after meeting, decide to close the chapter of their story off, and Zack, back in Seattle, asks to meet with Bliss. Pause: everyone in the story is upset at Zack because doesn’t that make Bliss his second choice? “Bliss should walk away. Bliss deserves better.”
I love the opening scene of their meeting, it’s the first time they’re seeing each other too, and Zack says, “You know and I know I made a mistake.”
Bliss has every right to not even meet him. She has every right, like everyone said, to walk away and find someone who would’ve chosen her. Maybe we find her foolish for listening to him, for forgiving him, and eventually choosing to accept his proposal to her.
It’s not that she’s magically over what happened. She acknowledges that she’s hurt, and it’s hard for Zack too because he’s the one who hurt her. Questions swirl in her mind: am I your second choice because you couldn’t have you couldn’t have your first option?
I think our first choice is not always our best choice. It’s not always from our best self, and actually a lot of times our first choice is out of fear. Zack chose Irina because on the onset it looked easier to choose someone who wouldn’t have a family that could reject him. He’s a normal, broken person who like all of us has a fear of being rejected. Does that mean he made the right choice? I think he was doing his best!
I’m doing my best. You’re doing your best. But that’s the thing: our best isn’t enough. Our best can be filled with fear and regret because Zack regrets his choice. In his vows to Bliss, he tells her that he knew he loved her when she was gone. Her character has spoken volumes about her love for him. She wasn’t chosen because she wasn’t good enough, but sometimes people have their own reasons outside of us that keep them from being with us. But Zack had gotten over his fears, he didn’t let his first bad choice to keep him from the best choice.
In a way, we can say that he was forced to make that choice. Choosing Irina was clearly not working out. However, a mistake shouldn’t define our present and future. His late mother had dedicated a song to him, “I Hope You Dance” and in the song it talks about not letting bitterness take over your life. I think that we can get caught up in the fact that we made the wrong choice, but we can choose to acknowledge our mistakes. We can own up to the fact that we did our best, but it didn’t mean it was the best for us.
We can choose to make the right choice now. Isn’t that the grace God gives to us? Not that we were perfect 24/7, but now we have the chance to do the right thing by God, by ourselves, and by others. We have a chance to receive forgiveness. We have a story that isn’t perfect but also isn’t outside of God’s redemption.
You have the chance to be different now, just like I do. That’s the grace of God. And as I think about Irina’s reactions to Zack, she didn’t have grace for him is what it came down to. Attraction is important, I believe that, but love is deeper than that. Love chooses ugly. Love chooses annoying, messy, and messed up. I know that because Jesus chose me.
And Bliss chose to have grace for Zack. She chose not to let her pride get in the way of a relationship with him. She had every right to hold it over him. She didn’t have to marry him after everything that happened. She wouldn’t have been wrong for that, but she chose the harder choice to stay and forgive. She chose to be vulnerable again after being broken.
It’s easy to be vulnerable if you’ve never been hurt. It’s courage to be vulnerable after encountering pain. She models for us the courage it takes to love someone especially after they break your heart.
I think that if Zack didn’t own up to his mistake and if Bliss didn’t have it in her heart to forgive what happened, they wouldn’t be able to sustain a marriage. That’s the thing about relationships. One person can’t maintain it on their own. Grace is given, but it also must be received. No matter how good your gift is, the other person has to take it.
While their story wasn’t perfect, they weren’t perfect, and they still aren’t perfect I see so much of God’s redemption in their story. A God who looks like a fool for loving so much. A God who gives second chances after we choose money, sex, power, and other people instead of Him. He sits at the table, listening to us say “You know and I know that I made a mistake”, and He has grace for us. He stands before the world, committing to us. He’s the one who has every right to leave, and He doesn’t.
Does this mean we should tolerate abusive, crazy, or toxic relationships? No! But there’s a difference between having grace for someone’s mistake that they’re admitting to and their repentance. Then it’s seeing if they’re making good on those promises. It’s not strong to accept bad behavior relentlessly. It’s not brave to stay somewhere you’re not safe or unloved.
For some people Zack’s decision wouldn’t have been reversible with them, but for those people, you didn’t have grace for him and that’s okay. What you accept and what I accept doesn’t have to be the same. You’re not worse for rejecting Zack and Bliss isn’t better for accepting him. God gives different people grace for us and our quirks.
There’s some people who probably find me too much or too little or just a touch strange. It’s okay because not everyone will have grace for me, but I believe God loves and celebrates me the way He created me to be. I believe that the man God has for me won’t tolerate me, won’t grit their teeth and bare me, but God will give him the grace to love me, Grace. Even enjoy me in all my humanity and love me all the same.
What I want to end with is that Jesus has grace for every mistake. Jesus doesn’t close His heart or remove His hand because you didn’t make Him your first choice. Whether you like Bliss’ choice or not, whether you care about Zack’s hair at the wedding, or whether you even watch the show it doesn’t matter. What matters is that no matter where you are, no matter what you’ve done, no matter if you’ve made God your last choice, God has grace for everything.
I can’t imagine what you have to forgive, and the truth is you have every right to hold onto that hurt. You don’t have to forgive, and how you feel is understood by God. I’m not even saying you should forgive, why would you forgive them? They’re undeserving. Maybe they’re not even sorry. Maybe they mock you for even giving grace to them.
That’s your journey and walk with God, and I want you to know that Jesus understands you. Jesus knows how hard it is to forgive your offenders. Jesus gets your pain. He will meet you where you’re at. He meets me every time. He’ll meet you too.
And when you’re ready, if you ever feel ready, He’ll give you grace for them. He’ll give you grace for you. He’ll give you grace for it all. Jesus, grace giver, redeemer, strong foundation, He will make a way for you to have grace no matter how impossible it seems.
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